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I presume that you mean that the histogram "looks okay, but it's a bit one-sided or off-centre"

If this is what you're referring to - it happens to many of us - comes from lots of circumstances, flat lighting etc etc. I [and most others] use Levels to slide the end-marker(s) inwards to 'kiss' the histogram and 'stretch' the image back to fill the frame. Tweaking curves will do nice things too

dunno if this helps ...
Regards, Phil

Of all the stuff in a busy photographers kitbag, the ability to see photographically is the most important
google me at Travelling School of Photography
images.: flickr.com/photos/ozzie_traveller/sets/

There is no such thing as a perfect historgram. There is a good article here on understanding histograms. If you have over-exposed a photo, consider looking at converting it to mono, quite often a mono photo can deal with over-exposure better, and have quite an impact, whereas the same photo in colour just looks 'blown out'.

"It is one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it is another thing to make a portrait of who they are" - Paul Caponigro

I shoot raw and I do understand histograms. My question was just if I have any loss of quality of any kind if i stretch the image in PP. Assuming nothing is blown out.

If this is what you're referring to - it happens to many of us - comes from lots of circumstances, flat lighting etc etc. I [and most others] use Levels to slide the end-marker(s) inwards to 'kiss' the histogram and 'stretch' the image back to fill the frame. Tweaking curves will do nice things too

I assume you are referring to PS tools here? I only use Lightroom but I think in the "basic" panel i can do the same things with the exposure black etc. adjustments.

Ideally expose correctly - but when you expose to the right a little you have more to play with,
if its exposed to the left (under exposed) you have more noise issues when lifting the levels.

the theory is that with a set of data values loitering up there on the RHS of the histogram, you have more signal and less noise to process. Excessive PPing of that image is then possible.
I've just spent the best part of a few hours describing that to another member.

My usual style is to expose with the histogram more to the left, and that's where all the colour is at! But then that leaves me no room to play PS jockey!
That's why I have to process to a very basic minimum. The only frivolity i allow myself is a very lightTonal Contrast(Tone Mapping) edit step from Nik's Colour Efex pro, where I've created my much less wild version of it and use it as a batch step.
At their settings I get crazy massive uber grain in my normal images(ie. darker more saturated stuff, but the same step works OK in the brighter(up to 1.3Ev brighter!) images(as long as the highlight as not blown).

I bracket and almost always end up using the darkest image, or sometimes the more neutral(second darkest) image. Very rarely do I use brighter of the three images.

I find that the darker images with less processing look more natural than the brighter images process back down to the same levels(where colour saturation looks nice, without looking like Ken Rockwell's "Scorched"!)

Well its the old saying mate .. Expose for the highlights and let the shadows take care of themselves.

You just need to be careful underexposing for scenes that have heavy shadow detail. By lifting exposure and adding fill into darkest pixel areas, and particularly at higher ISO, you risk introducing ugly ugly noise.

Well its the old saying mate .. Expose for the highlights and let the shadows take care of themselves.

You just need to be careful underexposing for scenes that have heavy shadow detail. By lifting exposure and adding fill into darkest pixel areas, and particularly at higher ISO, you risk introducing ugly ugly noise.